It’s rare to find a hard science fiction novel that is so personal, so intimate. In The Man of Cloud 9, the tech is an expression of everything protagonist Niko Rafaelo is, and society expresses itself through his tech. Because of this, even those of us who are easily bored by technobabble will stay engaged and have trouble putting the book down. It’s all thematically connected. Even in scenes that could have easily been marred by dry info dumps, Dreece parcels out the necessary information through genuine character moments.

Literary elegance aside, there are some fun moments too, with nods to existing sci-fi fandoms and the occasional pun character name. The main antagonist an entertaining Darth Vader type (in more ways than one.) She is possibly the only weakness of the story, with a motivation that doesn’t entirely fit with her M.O. That said, real people are often motivated by their own damage rather than logically, and Dreece gives the reader the impression there’s more to her story than what we see on the surface.